Korean Anthropology Discussions - Open Anthropology Cooperative2019-09-15T09:51:55Zhttp://openanthcoop.ning.com/groups/group/forum?groupUrl=korean-anthropology&feed=yes&xn_auth=noThe Japanese immigrants in North Koreatag:openanthcoop.ning.com,2014-12-19:3404290:Topic:2149152014-12-19T04:28:08.081ZLiam Starkeyhttp://openanthcoop.ning.com/profile/Liam
'There was something unspoken that they dare not voice. A black cloud hung over the house. As they sat behind their high walks eating their home grown vegetables a realisation sank in deeper and deeper with each passing year that a terrible mistake had been made'.<br />
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(From Barbara Demick's 'Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea')<br />
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Demick gives us the story of Jung Sang a young Korean man whose parents had migrated from Japan to the DPRK in the 1970s. His father was an ethnic Korean and a…
'There was something unspoken that they dare not voice. A black cloud hung over the house. As they sat behind their high walks eating their home grown vegetables a realisation sank in deeper and deeper with each passing year that a terrible mistake had been made'.<br />
<br />
(From Barbara Demick's 'Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea')<br />
<br />
Demick gives us the story of Jung Sang a young Korean man whose parents had migrated from Japan to the DPRK in the 1970s. His father was an ethnic Korean and a communist sympathiser. They apparently came to the DPRK with the belief that they could help build socialism. In the 1960s even up to the early 1989s the DPRK economy was doing relatively well by comparison with the South. Besides which the Sang family were quite privileged by North Korean standarss. they were allowed to build their own house in a quiet location with high walls to stop people looking in. They had Brought electrical appliances from Japan. They were even allowed a pet dog. What is more every year a ferry would bring relatives to visit from Japan. When his father and grandfather hugged, grandfather would shove a fat envelope stuffed full of Yen into the fathers jacket whilst the guards weren't looking.<br />
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Kang Chol Hwan came from a rich family in Kyoto. His grandmother was a leading Japanese communist and encouraged the family to North Korea. On the ferry waiters in white jackets served them an evening meal every night but when they arrived in Pyongyang the heroes welcome they had been promised never materialised and although they were housed in a salubrious area of Pyongyang they were viewed with suspicion. They had brought a car with them from Japan and were even able to obtain permission to go for jaunts into the countryside until eventually the police demanded they hand the car over to the state. (Taken from 'The Aquariums of Pyongyang by Kang Chol Hwan).<br />
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To Jang Jin Sung (author of 'Dear Leader') the arrival of the Japanese in North Korea in the 1960s and 70s had a subtle but powerful effect on the Korean consciousness. Although they had been the occupying enemy now Japan and Japanese people and things were admired. They brought with them lots of consumer goods. According to Sung it was common for ordinary North Koreans to display some discarded food packaging of the Fuji-San people as a kind of household treasure.<br />
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As with Jung Sang's family many Japanese Koreans realised the nature of the DPRK after settling but were by that stage unable to leave. Letters written to other relatives in Japan warning them not to come were intercepted and destroyed.<br />
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Once their usefulness as a source of hard currency had been exhausted many Japanese Koreans were purged and ended up in gulags like Kwang Chol Hwan's family.<br />
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I think the story of Japanese migrants in North Korea is interesting and perhaps not massively widely known until now. People were still migrating from Japan to North Korea until around 1988. Truth is in the hill one happens to be sitting ontag:openanthcoop.ning.com,2014-12-19:3404290:Topic:2149832014-12-19T03:55:27.226ZLiam Starkeyhttp://openanthcoop.ning.com/profile/Liam
'Where then is truth' declaimed Bedap, and yawned,<br />
'In the hill one happens to be sitting on.'<br />
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(From 'The Dispossesed' by Ursula K Le Guin).<br />
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Have we got the DPRK wrong? Yes there are serious human rights abuses, food shortages, no freedom of movement, no freedom of expression. But what if you look at the DPRK within its own terms, a Juche state that has held out against American imperialism for 54 years. The state has survived the effective collapse of the economy through playing off various…
'Where then is truth' declaimed Bedap, and yawned,<br />
'In the hill one happens to be sitting on.'<br />
<br />
(From 'The Dispossesed' by Ursula K Le Guin).<br />
<br />
Have we got the DPRK wrong? Yes there are serious human rights abuses, food shortages, no freedom of movement, no freedom of expression. But what if you look at the DPRK within its own terms, a Juche state that has held out against American imperialism for 54 years. The state has survived the effective collapse of the economy through playing off various powers against each other. Yes 1-2% of the population exist in gulags, but what proportion of Americans are part of the US prison industrial complex?<br />
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I have never been to the DPRK but, like many people I am curious about it. I have read a number of journalistic and survivor accounts of life within the DPRK. It still remains a mystery. But what shines through strongly in accounts like Los Angeles Times reporter Barbara Demick's collection of defector stories, 'Nothing to Envy' is that love, friendship, passion still exists beneath the monotonous facade we are presented on news channels. Daily life, family life, matchmaking, angling for a promotion, passing an exam, the small p politics of life all carry on.<br />
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The DPRK is a relic of the great dislocations of the 20th century and whilst it was a Stalinist puppet state, especially in the early years it is also a reminder that disaffection with 19th century capitalism eventually led to Marxism and an ideological rift in world politics.<br />
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Ideas about how to run society are still violently contested and there is no reason why these ideological dramas that led to the conditions for the creation of North Korea and the Kim dynasty could not be re-run in East Asia or in different parts of the world.<br />
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I think the DPRK is interesting as an object lesson in how far autocracy can go. As Paul French states in 'State of Paranoia' his analysis of the politics of the DPRK the regime must still enjoy significant buy in from large sections of the population otherwise it would have been overthrown long ago. French argues that was certainly the case in earlier decades where the peasant farmers, who had a torrid time under the Japanese occupation had quite modest goals to 'eat rice every day, have silk clothes and live in a tile roofed house'.<br />
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With pro-democracy protests coming to the end of the first phase in Hong Kong what is the future of the Asian century. Which of China's satellites might be a model for C21st society, HK or DPRK?